


it's in your blood, it's in your making

by rarmaster



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Gen, and then i created her two dads and one sister, and went ''WELL WHAT IF ONE OF THEM IS STILL ALIVE'', by OC i mean i went ''ha ha i wonder what anna's parents were like'', so welcome to: anna's dad bonds with his grandson and also chews kratos the fuck out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 22:24:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21417652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: As far as he knows, Shin is the last living Irving. His husband and their eldest daughter died almost twenty-five years ago, and their youngest daughter and grandson died nearly ten years after that.So: it's quite a surprise to hear his grandson’s name shouted suddenly from down a corridor as he helps Sheena break into Asgard ranch.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	it's in your blood, it's in your making

**Author's Note:**

> i went from "hypothetically, what was Anna's family like" to "oh, this is so much lore, and i'm in love with it" so fucking fast......
> 
> i love her whole family but i love Shin, Mizuho spy who isn't on speaking terms with Mizuho anymore because he started a war against the Desians for kidnapping his daughter, the most--

She did everything she could, but in the end Sheena was just one girl against a couple dozen Desians, fighting on turf that was not her own, and low on cards and mana besides. Mizuho does not train its warriors to fight against large groups, anyway. They are trained for subterfuge and secrecy, for knives plunged into unsuspecting backs rather than standing one’s ground against a well-prepared army. Sheena did what she could, but around her Luin burns, its people dead or carted away screaming, leaving her standing there, helpless, hopeless.

What was the point of resisting? Was there a point? Had she really thought she would _do _anything of use?

She is so, so, _so _tired.

“Hey!” calls a voice, distant. Sheena blinks through weary eyes for the source. When did she close her eyes? When did she sit down? “Hey, hold on.” And then, the speech shifts into something familiar and yet simultaneously incomprehensible until Sheena fully registers the words she is hearing as, impossibly, being spoken in Mizuho’s native tongue. “_—took quite a beating there, huh? It’s alright. You’re alright, now._” 

Hands gently find her arms and pull her to her feet. Sheena squints through the fog of exhaustion over her eyes, then shakes her head. Even though she’s quite certain it can’t be, her mouth asks, anyway:

“Grandpa…?”

The man supporting her weight laughs as he tugs her along. She’s too tired to make out the destination he intends to lead them to, too tired to care. “Not yours, I’m afraid,” he tells her. And, look, she _knows _that. She _knows_ that her own grandpa is still in Mizuho, still in a coma, and therefore he cannot possibly be here. And she _knows _that this man, here with her, is little too young to be her grandpa—though he is certainly up there in his years—and other than his accent and the way he keeps his silver hair in a Mizuho-style topknot, his clothes speak of having lived in Sylvarant for a while. So. Definitely not her grandpa. But.

“Who…?” she asks, before her vision blurs completely, and sleep takes her.

\- - -

Luin is something of a magnet for Desians, due to both its proximity to a ranch and its refusal to pay the Desians blood money for protection. Desian raids are something that Luin considers normal, expected, nothing to be surprised about. Rarely a month goes by without one or two buildings getting torched, a handful of people stolen away in the night. But this…?

The last time Shin saw a raid _this _bad was about twenty-five years ago. Then, just like now, the Desians came in numbers too large to fend off, and burned buildings without reservation, sparing not a single one. Every building torched. Every person living in Luin either killed or dragged off. The last time this happened, Shin lost his entire family. His husband dead, his daughters missing (_even if one of them he found again later, because if anyone was going to escape from a Desian ranch it _would _be Anna_). This time, he has no family to lose.

He has friends, though, neighbors he cares about. He knows that Mizuho did not train him for having any chance at fighting an entire army and winning (_though a part of him, the part that boasts and plans like Marcos does, argues that it doesn’t matter and he should try anyway_), so Shin acts a little smarter. He cannot win. But he can hide. It’s not much, but it does stop the Desians from reducing Luin’s population to zero, instead reducing it to… well, a dozen isn’t a lot at all, but some people are safe, some children will never face the Desian’s ranches, and that’s something. 

The Mizuho girl Shin found in the flames in the aftermath is also something.

She’s healing as well as Shin can get her to, with only gels and medical knowledge to his name—he is human, he knows no magic, no healing artes—but thankfully her injuries were slight, and it was _mana exhaustion _that had claimed her more than anything else. Mana exhaustion like humans don’t get, even those humans with exspheres. He tucks that information away for later, makes miso like he used to make for Luca, before—

Before.

Well, back when she was still learning the ins and outs of the magic in her veins and exhausting herself while she was testing what exactly her upper limits were.

The other survivors tended to and occupied for now, one of the older children happy to entertain the youngers, Shin takes the miso and heads to the back area of the house—which isn’t his, is just the most-intact one he could find—where he set up a makeshift bed for the Mizuho girl. It’s not a lot, just an area behind where the stairs used to be that’s been sectioned off with an old bedsheet as a curtain. A secluded place to rest. A secluded place to talk.

Not that he intends to interrogate her, or anything. Of course not. He’s just curious.

(_A Mizuho-raised ninja deciding to fight with all they have for the sake of Luin? Yeah, that’s a story he’s heard before._)

“Knock knock,” he calls, first, not sure if she’s awake or not. Based on the somewhat startled gasp, and the… ringing of a bell(??) she must be awake. There’s a scuffle of movement, too, and then her voice, lowered:

“Corrine, come on, you have to—”

“I want to stay!!” answers another voice, and Shin blinks. It sounds… young?

“But!”

“No one in Sylvarant cares!! Besides, if he’s from Mizuho, he already knows, right?”

“…yeah, yeah, okay. Okay you can stay—” Resignation becomes a short, startled little laugh. “Get your nose out of my ear! _Corrine._” And then: “Okay, yeah, you can come in!” the girl calls.

Shin gently pushes the edge of the sheet aside and ducks under where it’s been strung up, carefully balancing the dishes on the tray he brought with him. All of the dishware is mismatched, but that isn’t because he had to scrounge around for it. This was what was already in the cabinet. Living in Sylvarant—in Luin, especially—is like that. “I brought miso,” he says, holding the tray aloft. He starts to ask how she’s feeling, but then pauses, blinking at the foxlike creature that sits on her shoulder. Is that… what _is _that?

The girl must notice where his attention is, because she blushes. “Oh, this is Corrine. They’re, um, a summon spirit,” she explains.

Oh. Shin hums in understanding—of a lot of things, not just about Corrine—and silently offers the miso over. “You’re a summoner?” he asks, just to be sure.

“Uh-huh,” the girl answers. She takes the tray, but she’s too distracted by the question to offer thanks, though Shin is too busy waiting for her answer to mind. “Sheena Fujibayashi,” she introduces herself, as if the name means something more than just a name. Based on the twinge in her voice, and the way Corrine immediately rubs their face against her neck, maybe it does, and Shin just isn’t aware of it. He doesn’t get the chance to say so, though, because Sheena quickly follows up with: “What about you, though? They didn’t tell me there was anyone from Mizuho stationed in Luin.”

“Oh,” Shin says, and laughs. He pulls up a chair and sits down, smiling both bitter and proud. “Mizuho hasn’t spoken to me in about twenty years, now. Though I wasn’t exactly on good terms with them when I moved here thirty years ago, either.”

Sheena laughs, startled. “Really?” she asks.

Shin nods, his smile a little prouder. “Well, on a list of things Mizuho didn’t want me doing, rescuing a half-elf child from Sybak was definitely near the top,” he explains. “But that didn’t stop me. I just had to take Luca and move here, is all. Chief’s ‘blessing’, but I think they just wanted to get rid of me.”

“…huh,” Sheena says, looking slightly startled. Then she shakes herself out of it. “I mean, fuck Sybak though, honestly. The way the Research Academy treats half-elves is…” She doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t need to. Her grimace and Shin’s own knowledge is plenty.

“You’re familiar?” Shin asks, somewhat worried. Outside of the fact being a summoner implies she has elven blood _somewhere _in her ancestry, Sheena passes almost perfectly as human. Her face is a little longer, a little sharper, and he’s not sure that eye-color is natural for humans, but if Shin didn’t know what he was looking for because he raised a half-elf, he probably wouldn’t even notice at all. He wonders if anyone in Tethe’alla ever gave her trouble for it.

“A little, yeah, they helped teach me how to summon,” Sheena answers, fidgeting a bit where she sits. “It’s where I met Corrine, too…” Her face darkens. Then she seems to remember the miso, and says a quick thanks in traditional Mizuho style before she starts to eat. Well, there’s a moment where she picks up the spoon and sends it a dirty look, first, at which Shin laughs.

“Chopsticks are hard to come by, in Sylvarant,” he explains.

Sheena glances up at him, first surprised, then she laughs, kind of sad. “Yeah, I know,” she says. “…things are pretty bad over here, huh?”

“Yeah, they are.”

“Hey, what’d you say your name was?” Sheena asks.

Shin smiles. “Shin Irving,” he introduces himself.

Sheena raises her eyebrows. “Irving?”

It’s probably not possible to smile any wider than Shin currently is, except maybe if his fondness wasn’t weighed down by his grief. “I married someone from Sylvarant,” he explains. And he took the name Irving when he did, because it meant something more to him than Takayama ever had. (_Which is yet another on the list of things Mizuho’s mad at him for, he’s sure_.)

“Oh!” Sheena says, and then with the exact grace of someone who has no idea how to have a conversation about this, asks: “Are, uh, they nice?”

Shin chuckles, mostly at Sheena’s lack of social grace, but also with some fondness. Marcos was… dumb, and loud, and the most loving man Shin had ever met. But those memories are for Shin to keep, not to share. Instead he corrects Sheena with a gentle, if a bit awkward: “He’s dead now.”

“Oh, _goddess, _I’m so sorry—”

“No, it’s alright, it’s alright,” Shin assures her, quickly. “I probably should have said something sooner, but it’s difficult, you know? What am I supposed to do? Open conversations with ‘hi, I’m Shin, the Desians killed everyone I ever loved’—” He feels like Anna, when he jokes like that, and thinking of his daughter at all makes his heart twist with a slightly stronger grief (_Marcos’ death was at least quick, and he died before he was anywhere near a ranch_) but he pushes that down. Sheena laughs at the joke, anyway, so it’s fine.

“Yeah, that’s definitely a weird conversation starter,” she agrees.

She lifts the bowl of miso up to her mouth and takes a long drink, except halfway through she must remember something because she jolts.

“That’s right!” she says, slamming the bowl back into the tray. “The people—those that the Desians captured—I have to save them!”

“Sheena,” Corrine scolds gently, having moved from her shoulder to mattress next to her, but now they climb partway into her lap. “Maybe slow down? You’re still hurt…”

Sheena scowls, but it’s not with a lot of force. “I’m fine,” she insists. “I _am._ We don’t have time to wait around, anyway.”

“Well…” Corrine begins, but.

“We don’t,” Shin adds, agreeing with Sheena. “Have time, that is. If we want to rescue the captives before the worst happens to them, we need to move quickly. If Asgard ranch hasn’t changed much in the past twenty years, then I should still know where they keep the prisoners, at least.”

Sheena blinks at Shin, first in confusion, and then a smile slowly spreads across her face. “You’ve… done this before?” she asks, kind of exited, kind of relieved.

Shin nods. “Actively waging war against the Desians is why Mizuho finally stopped talking to me. It was the last straw, I suppose.” He laughs. Sheena looks a little horrified, but Shin didn’t care much about the matter when they cut contact with him, and he certainly doesn’t care twenty years after the fact. Not being able to use Mizuho’s information network to check in on things is the only thing he misses, if he’s honest.

“You went to war against the Desians?” Sheena asks, like she can’t quite believe it.

“Up until they completely crushed our rebellion,” _and killed my daughter, _Shin replies, his smile a little bitter. “Yes, we did.”

Sheena grins, rubbing her hands together, filled with a sudden, grim kind of delight and determination. “Alright!” she declares, and claps her hands once. “Then let’s start working out a plan of attack.”

Miso set aside and forgotten about, Sheena launches into drilling Shin about what he knows and how they can put it into practice. And just like that, it’s like Shin is twenty years younger. All the picture is missing is a laughing, anxious crowd of other rebellion members the next room over, and Anna talking brightly and frantically trying to pin down her thoughts as her sentences get more and more winding and her ideas get bigger and bolder, and over in the corner, watching her like she’s the only thing that matters in the world, would be—

Biting down his anger for a man he’ll never see again, Shin puts the thoughts out of his mind.

\- - -

Twenty years ago, the planning session would have looked a little like this.

“So?” Anna asks, bright, watching her husband as he carefully closes the door behind him and makes his way over to the table where she has three separate maps spread out and everything else haphazardly pushed to the side to make room. “What’s the verdict? Can we pull it off?”

Kratos laughs, fond, and makes his way to join her so he can look over her shoulder. He pauses only long enough to bend down and absently scratch that definitely-not-actually-a-dog of his on the ears, which Noishe accepts with a few excited tail wags. Shin doesn’t take his eyes off of Kratos once, not that he actually thinks of Kratos as a threat, but because his training pings everything about how Kratos moves as something to keep an eye on; that man is a walking weapon, and he’s wholly confident in that fact, even when he’s relaxed and joking quietly with Shin’s daughter.

“Guards here and here,” Kratos says, indicating the points on the sketchy map they scrounged up of Asgard ranch. Shin sits up a little straighter so he can see the map better from where he’s sitting. “The back entrance, here, has significantly less, but it’s much further from where the prisoners are held.”

“Well, it’s not like Desians are a problem for _you_,” Anna counters, nudging Kratos playfully.

“No,” Kratos agrees. “But if we dispose of too many, we’ll draw attention.”

“As if we aren’t going to draw attention by freeing all the people they have in _cages_.” There’s an edge in Anna’s voice, a crack over the way she says cages, and Shin watches her hands tighten her grip in the edge of the table, for a moment. She’s… better. Better now than she was years ago, after she first got out. But…

“You don’t have to go,” Kratos tells her, gently. Shin scoffs under his breath. Wrong thing to say.

“I’m fine, I’ll be fine,” Anna snaps, glaring up at him. She holds her chin high, eyes burning, slightly off-kilter but full of a pride that she projects and clings too, much like her other father does—used to. “I mean, look at me!” She flexes, showing off the muscle mass she fought tooth and nail to get back. “Desians can’t touch this! I’ll snap their fucking necks!”

Kratos makes a face like maybe he’d like her to snap _his _neck, and Shin immediately closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, wishing quite desperately he could blot that from his memory. What his daughter and her husband get up to behind closed doors is something he doesn’t want to think about. At all.

“Besides,” Anna continues, a little more sincere. “If I let them keep me from undermining their tyranny because I’m _scared_, then they win, and the last thing I want is for those bastards to win.” Her smile is all teeth. “I’m not scared, anyway. I’m furious. I _refuse _to let them hurt anyone else like they hurt me.”

“Then,” Kratos says, and then has to pause to clear his throat and Shin refuses to think about why Kratos might be having trouble with words at the moment. “We go in the back, secure safe passage, free the prisoners and leave the way we came,” he explains, drawing a path on the map as he talks.

“Perfect,” Anna says, immediately. “Let’s do this.” Much like her other father, the fact that there’s at least a dozen more questions to make sure of the shape of the plan escapes her, but it doesn’t escape Shin.

Kratos hums, fond, then picks up Anna’s half-finished coffee mug and takes a sip. _Instantly _his face scrunches up in disgust. “Augh, why did I do that,” he grumbles, setting the mug back down. He shakes his head. “I’m starting to think you make it like that just to keep me from stealing it.”

Anna laughs. “What are you talking about? It tastes perfect!”

“It doesn’t even taste like coffee…” Kratos counters, with a long-suffering sigh. “Shin?” he asks.

“There’s more in the kitchen, but you know it isn’t that strong,” Shin answers. Coffee isn’t too hard to come by, at least, but the food shortage in Sylvarant still means they have to ration it, especially since they need to make sure they have enough for their entire resistance force.

“That’s fine,” Kratos says, already moving that direction. “Anything will taste better than that abomination Anna drinks.”

“This is the ideal way to drink coffee!!!” Anna shouts after him, grinning. “Y’all are crazy!!”

Shin laughs. He’ll wait until Kratos gets back to drill him about the specifics of the plan, and then maybe it’ll be in a shape concrete enough that they can put it into action tomorrow.

\- - -

As far as he knows, Shin is the last living Irving. His husband and their eldest daughter died almost twenty-five years ago, and their youngest daughter and grandson died nearly ten years after that. His son-in-law, he knows, is still alive (_if Kratos had died, the world would not still be like this_) but to call that coward an Irving would be something of an insult to the name.

Regardless. Seeing as that he is pretty sure his entire family (_minus Kratos_) is dead, it is quite a surprise to hear his grandson’s name shouted suddenly from down a corridor as they traverse Asgard ranch. It is enough of surprise, in fact, that Shin stops dead in his tracks, twisting to better peg which direction, _exactly, _the shout came from.

“Something wrong?” Sheena asks, stopping beside him.

Shin hesitates. They really don’t have time for this. They’re already halfway through their rescue mission, chasing ghosts isn’t a reason to change their plans, and Sheena has put so much faith in him, he’d hate to let her down, _but_—“Lloyd,” he says, breathless. “That’s the name of my grandson.” He doesn’t even get his request out before Sheena’s answering it.

“If he’s your family and he’s in trouble, then he takes priority,” she insists, already changing direction. “Come on!”

They don’t have far to go before they’re in the room where all the commotion is, entering from a back door that no one’s guarding, exactly. Or rather, all the attention is certainly not on them but rather the cornered group of five at the opposite side of the room.

Kratos is the first person that catches Shin’s attention, in part because he looks exactly as he did fifteen years ago, in part because that hair draws eyes even though Kratos doesn’t want it to. Fury roils through his veins, quelled only by the sight of the boy standing next to Kratos. Lloyd, Lloyd, _that has to be Lloyd. _The age is about right, his hair’s the same as Anna’s, and even though he hasn’t grown into it yet the square of his shoulders is identical to his father’s. If that _isn’t _his grandson, Shin will eat his own katana.

But before the relief can quite set in, Kvar—_of course he’s here, why wouldn’t he be in his own base_—says the words “A012” and.

Vaguely, Shin is aware of Sheena’s startled shout. But if there are words in Sheena’s protest, he does not register them. He does not register anything until his sword is in Kvar’s neck. Even then, time is still diluted, slow, and all he is aware of is Kvar dying under his hands and the sharp satisfaction that lodges itself into his throat at the sight.

“That,” he says, cold and clear, “is for my daughter. And for everyone else you took from me.”

Kvar’s too dead to hear it. That’s fine, though.

His body drops to the floor. Shin neatly bends down and cleans his katana off on Kvar’s clothes then sheathes it again, and time snaps back into place. The startled expression on his grandson’s face is not, exactly, the one he was hoping to see and this certainly is not how he’d ever wanted to meet his grandson after having been quite certain the boy was dead, but beggars can’t be choosers, can they? And he would never choose Kvar alive, even if it meant Lloyd looking slightly less horrified than he does right now. The other three people in the room are still blurs on Shin’s perception—there, but irrelevant.

The next problem, anyway, is Kratos.

“…Shin,” he says, by way of greeting. His face is caught in horror of a different sort than Lloyd’s. Horror, due to his recognition of the man in front of him.

“Kratos,” Shin says, in return.

And about then Sheena stumbles into place beside him. “What was _that_!?” she demands, sounding more panicked than angry. “I mean I don’t—blame you, I think, but we can’t _take on all these Desians at once._”

The gathered Desian guards—probably around two dozen, total—all seem to have gotten over their initial shock of how quickly their highest ranking commander on base has just been brutally murdered. They move, now, and Sheena makes a frustrated noise, digging a card out of the folds of her clothes. A very specific card. One that Shin would not wish her to waste.

“Never mind,” Sheena grumble. “I’ll make some cover, then we can—”

“No need,” Shin interjects. “Kratos?”

“There’s nothing wrong with a retreat,” Kratos begins.

Moving at about the same speed he just slaughtered Kvar with, Shin moves again, grabbing Kratos by the wrist so he cannot _escape. _Unfortunately, he knows his son-in-law tremendously well. Voice lowered, tone tight, he tells Kratos: “Your secrets are all already forfeit, the moment we are out of here. And if you want me to trust you again…”

Quite honestly, Kratos looks more lost now than Shin has ever seen him—that deceivingly young face caught between unease and anger and _grief, _so much grief. He must hate being here and he must hate everything Kvar has reminded him about Anna, and he certainly must hate the position that Shin has put him in, just now. Shin would feel bad, but: the Desians are preparing spells and starting to jeer and the half-elf woman who Shin hasn’t categorized past the fact she’s Here says something about needing to make a decision fast and Lloyd draws his swords in anticipation of an oncoming attack and

The mana around Kratos swells with his decision.

It’s needlessly dramatic, but few things Kratos does with purpose are ever _not._

Wings of solid teal light unfurl from his back and there is no time for an incantation, so Kratos doesn’t bother with one. The surrounding ambient mana is just immediately set alight with holy fire.

When the air clears not a single Desian remains in this room.

The younger half-elf clings to the older, looking somewhat frightened—_and after the mana did what it just did, Shin can’t say he’s surprised_—but also furious, they both look furious. The girl, the Chosen, Colette—she looks delighted but unsurprised. Lloyd looks like he is so, _so _lost. Whatever memories he has of when he was a child must be very, very faint, by now. Unfortunately that makes sense.

“_What _was that!?” the younger half-elf demands, still clinging to the elder’s clothes. “How long have you been able—_you’re an angel too!?_”

“Yeah, that would have been nice to know, maybe?” Lloyd adds, his tone landing somewhere between legitimately upset and mostly just awed and _this is not a thing that matters, right now._

“Questions later,” Kratos says, his voice tight and small. Shin knows these as signs meaning he should probably back down but he doesn’t _care _right now. His daughter has been dead for fifteen years and _this man _has done nothing in her absence except make the world worse like he _promised he wouldn’t. _He tightens his grip around Kratos’ wrist, and Kratos glares at him. “You can let go,” he says, and there’s a _threat _there, a threat that Shin just lets slide right off of him.

“And let you run away?” Shin counters. “I think not.”

Kratos’ eyes narrow, and he turns to Shin with more intent. “I could break your wrist, instead,” he says.

Shin is distinctly aware that this is a man who has four thousand years of training in violence under his belt, distinctly aware that it would not take Kratos much effort at all to snap any bones he wished. _However. _He also is distinctly aware that his son-in-law has a damningly soft heart, and finds difficulty in harming anyone he loves (_which is why Mithos still lives_), so Shin does not actually think himself in danger, exactly. And if he learned anything, after all those years he spent with Kratos, he learned that Kratos will bend quickly, despite all the show he puts on.

So Shin just pulls out one of several aces he has tucked up his sleeve.

“I could just tell everyone everything _now_,” he says, brightly, and he knows his smile has an edge to it because he watches Kratos’ resolve crack, just a little. “But I was hoping I wouldn’t have to start with the parts that make you look like a dick.”

“What… do you know about Kratos that the rest of us don’t?” the elder half-elf asks, her eyes narrowed.

Kratos hesitates, and Shin waits. Kratos, unfortunately, gets bailed out by the Chosen.

Her smile is bright, but the kindness behind her eyes is kind of sharp. Maybe that’s an angel thing. “You know, I really do appreciate you helping us out like you did,” she says, all teeth. “But maybe you should stop holding our friend hostage? Surely Kratos hasn’t done anything…”

There’s no reason to lie. Might as well give them some of the truth.

As pleasantly as he can manage, right now, fingers still wrapped tight around Kratos’ wrist, Shin explains: “I have some questions I need to ask Kratos, is all, regarding my daughter.” Kratos flinches. _Good. _“And I hate to involve you all in family politics, so perhaps we should split up, briefly. Sheena, you can take Lloyd and the rest and free the prisoners. Kratos and I will see about destroying the base. If the Desians can never use this place again to hurt people, that’s better, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, that’s what we’ve already been doing,” Lloyd agrees. “But…”

“We can meet back up afterwards,” Shin insists. “And then talk.”

“There’s not really time to keep hashing it out right now, either,” Sheena adds, and Shin feels a grateful fondness in his chest for her because that was kind of her, to back him up like this. “All the Desians in the base are going to be on us any minute, there’s no way they didn’t feel that—whatever the hell that was.”

“That’s… true,” the half-elf woman agrees. “We should hurry. _But_.”

“I just want to talk to Kratos,” Shin says. “And it really cannot wait, considering I haven’t seen him in years.” And because if Kratos is allowed any more time, he _will _find a way to run. If snapping Shin’s bones just to escape this conversation wouldn’t cause a scene of another, equally awkward if less emotionally painful sort, Kratos would likely already be gone.

(_Is it rude of Shin to exploit Kratos’ weaknesses like this? Perhaps, but he’s well beyond the point of caring about that._)

“Come on,” Shin says, before anyone else can protest—if they try to stop him, then he will just tell them the rest of the truth. He would like to put that off, just a little, just so he can judge how much of a threat Kratos is first, how much the man is stuck, how much he isn’t willing to undo. But if he must spill now…

Well, it doesn’t matter. No one stops him from leading Kratos out the door opposite the one Shin entered by. (_Sheena will lead the rest out that door, because that is the fastest way to captives they intend to set free._)

“It will be difficult for me to fight, like this,” Kratos says, gesturing with his free hand to the one Shin is still holding in a vice grip. Shin has his left hand around Kratos’ right, which means Shin’s sword hand is free but Kratos’ is not. Not that it matters, for Kratos.

“Use your magic, then.”

“Hmph.”

He may not like it, but Kratos’ magic makes quick work of any Desians they stumble upon. Shin deliberately takes the long way around to where they’re heading, but there’s something he needs Kratos to see, first. In the meantime:

“Does Lloyd know?” he asks.

“Know what?” Kratos asks in return, feigning ignorance.

“That you’re his father.”

Kratos hesitates so long that Shin wonders if he doesn’t intend to answer at all, but finally: “No,” he says, quiet. Any quieter and it would have been lost underneath their footsteps and the constant hum of machinery.

Shin makes a disapproving sound. “And why not?”

“It.” Kratos begins, but takes moments to find his words. Shin waits, not that he really has the patience for it. “It is not something… easy. To explain.”

“Nothing about you is easy,” Shin counters.

“No,” Kratos admits, with a sigh.

Silence, again. Either Kratos has no questions for Shin or has not quite figured out how to put them together, given how usually slow he is with all of his thoughts and slower still with the words he says. Shin doesn’t care, though, doesn’t have the time to wait. Not for Kratos to put words together to interrogate _him_. What Shin’s doing here doesn’t matter. What _Kratos _is doing here is the most important question anyone can ask, right now.

“You’re here to escort the Chosen on her journey, correct?” Shin asks. “To ensure she finishes it?”

Kratos’ silence is plenty answer.

Shin bites his tongue and for the moment, swallows his rage. He has so many things he wants to say, demand, because how _dare _Kratos turn back to Cruxis? How _dare _he throw away all of the work he put in to undermine them, how _dare _he dishonor Anna’s memory in this way? But words, right now, are not going to speak louder than the walls around them.

Kratos stops in his tracks. Shin stops, too, because even with his training, no man could hope to move an angel who did not want to be moved.

“This is the wrong way,” Kratos says.

“It isn’t,” Shin insists.

It is not their intended destination, not the control room where they will find the self-destruct option for the base. No. But it is where Shin intended to take them. Hallways dim because they have not been used in twenty years, the Angelus Project’s progress halted the day Anna escaped, but the machinery still hums and the cells stink of old blood and bodily waste. It’s enough to make Shin’s stomach churn, though careful training keeps him from immediately gagging. He hopes Kratos and his enhanced, angel senses, are having a much worse time right now.

Shin does not look too closely at the machinery in the adjacent room, does not let himself imagine how exactly it might have been used to torture his daughter. Kratos, however, seems stuck. Like he cannot pull his eyes away. 

“It- _wasn’t _faster- to go this way,” Kratos manages, words ground out between his teeth. Is it anger that makes his syllables so clipped? Is it something else? Shin watches, tries to weigh the expression in Kratos’ eyes as grief or fury, tries to decide if he cares. He wonders if Kratos has a better idea of what these machines do. He doesn’t have to wonder. Of course Kratos does.

“I wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten,” Shin says, carefully, “What exactly Cruxis did to her.”

Maybe it makes him cruel, that he enjoys the way Kratos’ expression cracks with all his grief. Shin doesn’t care.

“I never forgot,” Kratos insists.

“Then why are you acting like you have?”

“I…” Kratos begins, but never finds the words to answer.

Machinery hums. Lights flicker. Kratos ducks his head down so his hair hides his face, curls further and further in on himself and Shin watches, Shin wrestles a storm in his chest. He is furious, but he is also filled with pity. Despite everything, Kratos _is _family. Anna loved him, Anna married him, Anna was the reason he stuck around and the reason Shin got to see all the quiet, bright, living parts of Kratos. None of those parts sit in Kratos’ shoulders, now. There is only a loud, dark, _grief, _a _brokenness _that despite his anger makes Shin sad to see. He does not want Kratos to suffer. He just wants Kratos to answer for his choices, his mistakes.

“Kratos,” he says.

Kratos does not look up, but he grunts, to show he heard.

“Why?” Shin asks.

“Nothing mattered anymore,” Kratos says, quiet but firm.

Shin laughs, once, startled. Then again: louder, _angrier. _“Nothing mattered anymore?!” he repeats. How absurd! “You’re telling me that all of our hard work—everything _Anna _fought for and bled for and sacrificed for—none of that mattered, anymore? Like it somehow lost value, the moment she died?”

Kratos shrugs. “It did.”

“That’s the _shittiest _thing I’ve ever heard,” Shin seethes, fingers tightening on Kratos’ wrist. He wishes he had the strength to snap it, but he does not. Angel bones are something else.

“It’s true.”

“And so you _went back to Cruxis_?”

Kratos shrugs again.

“Yeah.”

Twenty years too late, Shin is starting to understand why exactly his husband had such a fondness for punching first and talking later. He wants to smash Kratos’ face in _so terribly badly, _but it would get him nowhere. Maybe some catharsis, but he doesn’t think it’s worth it. He thinks about it, though. He thinks. And he fumes.

“Why Cruxis?” Shin demands, still not able to understand it, still furious beyond belief. “Because it was easier?”

“Because it didn’t matter,” Kratos answers, his tone bright with how _little _he _cares_. “Because none of it matters. Not even now. Absolutely nothing matters.”

Shin growls. Nothing, huh? Not even Anna? Not even her memory? Not even the impact she had on Kratos’ life? Or was her existence really nothing more than a blip on Kratos’ radar, easily forgotten in the impossibly long span of life he has lived?

But though Shin hates to admit it, Anna’s memory _isn’t _as important as:

“What about Lloyd?” he asks. His grandson, Anna’s son, Kratos’ son, _alive and well. _That’s more important than any memory Anna left behind, because _Lloyd is still living, _and Lloyd can still be hurt by Kratos’ choices. “Are you telling me Lloyd doesn’t matter?”

He feels Kratos tense in his grasp, watches hands curl into fists.

“It’s too late,” Kratos says, resolute.

Could this man get any more _impossibly dense_? “Too late for what?” Shin asks.

“To fix anything,” Kratos insists. “So it doesn’t matter.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true.”

“_No,_” Shin seethes. And somehow, that’s the tipping point. His anger boils over, he moves. He twists Kratos’ arm and yanks the man towards him, in practiced movements hooking the crook of his elbow under Kratos’ armpit, twisting Kratos’ shoulder that he is all but dislocating it. Habitually his feet move, front foot locked against the inside of Kratos’ to kick his ankle out from under him at any second.

Shin is well aware Kratos might not even feel any pain from the way his shoulder is twisted, is even more aware that against _Kratos _this is nothing more than show. But he hopes it _at least _shows Kratos he means business.

Or maybe Kratos is beyond the point of caring.

(_Not everyone can take their grief and turn it into fire, into action. Not everyone can take their grief and declare war on those who took their loved ones out of their life._)

Still.

“It is _not_ too late to fix this!” Shin insists, his face very close to Kratos’. Kratos continues to hide behind all his hair.

“Yes it is.”

“For a regular man, yes. I’ll admit: there is nothing a single, regular man could do against all of Cruxis,” Shin says. “But _you _are not a regular man, Kratos. _You _are one of the four most important people in existence. _You _are Cruxis’ second-in-command. _You _are the older brother of the deranged child-god who fucked up the world to begin with. If one person could fix the worlds, Kratos, it’s _you_.”

The room is very still, very silent.

And then Kratos laughs, short and broken.

“Kill me, then,” he whispers, limp in Shin’s hold. “Release Origin. Fix the world. Avenge your daughter by killing both her murderers.”

Shin jolts.

Kvar, of course, Kvar is responsible for Anna’s death.

But Kratos…

Pieces of a puzzle slot together in Shin’s mind. He does not like the picture they paint.

“You- you didn’t,” he says, throat dry.

“I did.”

No. Kratos couldn’t. Kratos _wouldn’t, _not unless he had no choice.

“The exsphere was removed, right?” Shin asks. “There wasn’t another way?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kratos says.

Of course. Of course he’d say that. Of course he’d think that. Of course it would be the only thing he could possibly think, after _that. _Shin knows what it’s like to lose, Shin knows because his husband and both his daughters are dead, but he _did not have to kill any of them. _He cannot fathom that kind of grief, cannot fathom the way such a thing must shatter one’s soul. He can only see the brokenness, the weight, set upon Kratos’ shoulders. That, and nothing more.

He lets Kratos go.

Kratos, unresisting, slumps to the ground.

“Well?” he asks, unmoving.

Shin recoils. “_No,_” he says. “I’m not- I’m not _killing _you.”

“Isn’t that the least I deserve?” Kratos asks, tired and mirthful.

No no no no no no no _no, _and if Shin has to listen to even one more second of this he’s going to do. Something. He isn’t sure what, but he’ll do something. He’ll start making coffee the way Anna does and then force it down Kratos’ throat and watch him suffer, maybe, but he certainly isn’t going to _kill him._

(_Shin will never say he does not understand why Kratos never just shoved a knife between Mithos’ ribs and wiped his hands of the mess. He will never say that, because he _does_ understand why Kratos didn’t, couldn’t. He understands._)

“Absolutely not,” Shin insists. “I won’t kill you.”

“I killed your daughter,” Kratos argues, gently lifting his head so he can look Shin in the eye. He does not look confused, exactly. Just needling in the way he argues, as if he expects at some point for Shin to catch up. “Aren’t you furious?”

Shin shakes his head. “I’m not mad that you killed her.” Well, he is mad, but not at Kratos, not about that. “In those circumstances, you had no other choice. I can forgive that.”

Kratos is a smart man. So he hears the unfinished thought, and he raises his eyebrows, and he asks: “But?”

“But acting like Anna never existed in your life the moment she was dead?” Shin says. “_That_, I will never forgive.”

Kratos turns away. He doesn’t move.

“Get up,” Shin says. “Let’s fix this.”

“If we want to do that, I have to die,” Kratos says, as if he cannot bear going even two seconds without asking Shin to kill him.

“Knock that off,” Shin spits. It’s not like him to boss people around, not like this, but maybe Anna rubbed off on him. Or maybe he’s just out of patience. “You better be done with that by the time we’ve met up with Lloyd again. You aren’t dying. We’ll find another way.”

Kratos shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does.” Since he has to do all the work here, apparently, Shin bends down and lifts Kratos by the bicep. Or, he _nudges _Kratos into moving, he supposes. _Coerces _the man into it. If Kratos had truly wanted to spend the rest of his life heaped there on the floor, Shin could not have done anything to physically change that. “Come on, we’re going to destroy this base, and then we’re going to fix the rest. That’s not optional.”

“Fine,” Kratos relents, and lets Shin lead him along.

\- - -

Shin thinks of a night, more than fifteen years ago, when his youngest daughter was still alive.

Anna couldn’t sleep that night, but she has trouble sleeping most nights, even before she was shoved into the ranch. It’s how her brain has always functioned. So Shin doesn’t think much of it at all, curled up in the bed next to her, talking to her about anything and everything in hopes to either lull her to sleep or to at least keep her company so her boredom doesn’t devour her entirely. They talk about Kratos, shittalk the Desians a little, and when Anna’s hands stray to her not-yet-swollen belly for the third time:

“Are you nervous?” Shin asks.

Anna blinks. “About what?” she asks. Either she’s feigning ignorance, or she legitimately is not on the same page. Neither would be a surprise.

“The baby,” Shin elaborates.

“Ohhhh,” Anna says, and her face scrunches up a little bit. She takes a moment before she answers, shifting how she’s leaning against her father a little bit. She lays her head back in the crook of his neck, most of her weight on his shoulder and the rest on his arm. If she falls asleep like this, it’ll be hell, but she’ll be asleep, so Shin will deal. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess about the actual being pregnant thing, because that’s kind of weird if I think about it a lot. But I think. I think once I have the kid I’ll stop freaking out so much.”

Shin hums, worried. “So you are freaking out.”

“A little!!” Anna fidgets, frustrated. “Being pregnant kind of sucks and it’s only gonna suck worse until it’s over and I’m- I mean I’m-” She scowls, wringing her hands furiously together in her lap. “What if they don’t make it, you know? What if something goes wrong.”

Her voice is quiet, grim. She has every reason to worry. Carrying a pregnancy to term isn’t easy, not in Sylvarant, not with the food shortages the way they are and the complete lack of doctors they know. But.

“If anyone’s got this, it’s you, Anna,” Shin assures his daughter, pressing a kiss to the top of her hair. “You’re strong. You’ve survived worse.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Anna said, and her voice takes on a tone he hears from her so rarely. A cold kind of emptiness. Too much exhaustion in her bones for fear or for anger. He watches her hands trail up to the stone set in her collarbone, watches her fingers trail the scarred, sick skin attached to the stone. “Worried about _this fucking thing _fucking things up. If it’s not safe for _me, _then it can’t be safe for any child I want to bring into this world, I _fucking hate it—”_

Shin grabs Anna by the wrists and drags her hands away from the stone.

“Anna,” he says.

His heart is hammering in his throat. Usually she doesn’t get that close to ripping the exsphere out unless she’s half-asleep and fully incoherent. She tries to yank her hands away from him, but he holds her tight. After particularly bad nightmares, it’s usually two full minutes before it’s safe to assume she isn’t going to immediately claw at her throat again. This isn’t a nightmare, but Shin still isn’t taking any chances.

“Let _go _of me,” Anna hisses, sharp and just short of panicked, and maybe he should because he knows she has Problems as far as being restrained goes. But he can’t let her hurt herself, either. That exsphere isn’t safe to mess around with.

“Anna, please,” Shin says, as gentle as he can. “You know you can’t touch the—”

“I need my hands, Papa!” Anna shouts, high and terrified and.

Shin lets go.

“Sorry, sorry,” he apologizes. He scoots away from her, because they’ve probably hit the point where she can’t stand to be touched At All, so he better not try. He definitely made the wrong decision, but he’s used to her waking up from a nightmare, single-minded in trying to get the stone that hurts her out of her skin, so he reacted accordingly—but it wasn’t the right time for that. “Sorry, I should have listened.”

Anna doesn’t say anything, she just breathes, shaky and close to hiccupping on each breath and all her terror. After a few minutes she manages to wrestle herself together. Immediately, she elbows Shin as hard as she can in the ribs.

Well, he deserved that. He deserves the bruise that’s going to leave, too.

“Stop stressing me out,” Anna whines, and Shin relaxes a little, because her tone suggests she isn’t mad in a lasting kind of way. “It’s bad for the baby!”

“Sorry,” Shin says, again. And then, to give her mind something to think about other than the memories that are surely boiling under her skin, he asks: “Do you know what you’re going to name them? The baby.”

Anna hesitates for a moment, then flops back against the wall. She’s clearly exhausted from wrestling her trauma back down and out of the way, but he knows she appreciated the distraction, because she’s sighing like she’s thrown herself completely into thinking about it.

“Lloyd, I think,” she answers, after a moment. “If it’s a boy. That’s the name me and Kratos agreed on. Dunno if it’s a girl, though.”

“Does Kratos have any ideas?”

Anna groans. “Yeah, but you’ll _never _guess what Kratos wants to name them if they’re a girl.”

Well, Shin only needs about one guess if Anna’s opinion on the matter is _that_. “Tell me he wouldn’t,” he pleads.

“Oh, he _wants _to!” Anna’s smile is bright and bitter. “I’m absolutely not going to let him but—I haven’t thought of any other girl names that I _like_.” She turns to her father. “If you have suggestions, I’m open to them.”

“Hmm… What about Laura?” Shin suggests.

Anna’s face scrunches up in recognition. “Isn’t that the name that Luca—That she almost chose, when she was talking about changing names?”

Shin nods. That’s why he mentioned it.

“That’s almost as bad as Kratos’ idea,” Anna protests.

“I don’t think so,” Shin counters. “In fact, I think if Luca were here, she’d have already suggested it to you.” There’s a pang in his heart as he talks about it, talks about his daughter that didn’t live, but he shoulders it and keeps his head up. He watches as Anna takes a deep breath, does the same.

The grief is thick, but wallowing in it will get them nowhere. They both know that.

“Well,” Anna says, though she doesn’t sound fully convinced. “I guess it’s better than _Martel._” She scoots down a little bit, so her head’s closer to the pillows, stifling a yawn. “I’ll keep thinking about it…”

She reaches her hand over until she finds Shin’s hand, which she grabs and squeezes. She looks tired enough she might actually manage sleep, if only she can get her mind to wind down.

“Would you like me to tell you a story about Luca?” Shin offers, because recounting to Anna tales of things that happened when she was too little to remember has always been the best way to actually get her to go to sleep. “Or if you want to hear one about my childhood, I think I remember a few…”

“_Please _tell me the one where Luca shoves a fireball in that asshole’s face,” Anna says, immediately, which is honestly what Shin expected from her. “I love that one.”

“You aren’t going to sleep if I tell that one,” he argues.

“I don’t care I wanna hear it.”

Shin smiles, fond, and squeezes his daughter’s hand. “Alright, alright,” he says, and he starts talking. Anna clings to consciousness through the first story—she always does, because the story about him smuggling Luca out of Sybak is her favorite—but dozes off halfway into the one he starts telling about Mizuho folklore. He tells the whole thing, just to be sure, then settles down to stay with her for the rest of the night, because she always sleeps better when someone’s with her.

Shin wonders briefly, before he falls asleep, if his grandchild is going to be the same way.

\- - -

“Can’t sleep?” Shin asks, carefully approaching Lloyd. 

They’re all camped out in the ruins of Luin, Lloyd and his group, as well as all of the rescued captives. Having only spent a day or so in captivity, most of the people of Luin are well off, angry and eager to rebuild, though Shin can see that even only a day in captivity has left scars on some. He counts it lucky that less than half had been equipped with exspheres. Those that had been taken captive before the previous night were worse off, of course, thin and frail and jumping at shadows, exspheres gleaming and terrible as if the stones have been well-fed. There will be a lot of rebuilding and recovery to do, but for now they rest.

Lloyd looks up at Shin, sending him a withering look. “In my defense, I don’t know how you expect _anyone _to sleep after learning…” He gestures with his hands for something too vague to put into words, and Shin laughs. “All that,” Lloyd settles on, finally. “It’s too much to think about. Of course I can’t sleep.”

He’s alone, right now, away from the fire that his friends are sleeping fitfully around. Colette doesn’t even attempt to sleep, and Raine is also awake with her thoughts, so it makes sense that Lloyd is as restless, after what transpired today—both at the ranch, and the conversations afterwards. The truth about the twin worlds, and the Chosens, and the journey of regeneration… The truth about Kratos, and Cruxis, and the Desians. It’s a lot to digest. Sheena and Colette latched mostly onto the fact there was a way to fix the worlds without sacrificing either or Colette, while Raine fixates on Kratos and his involvement and his secrets, which means Genis fixates on that as well, because his sister won’t be quiet about it. What Lloyd’s thoughts are preoccupied with is technically a mystery, seeing as he excused himself from the group almost immediately, but Shin has… a pretty good guess.

After all, Lloyd’s family is the center of all this mess, and he learned a lot today from Kvar, just as he learned from Kratos, and then from Shin.

“Sorry to have dropped all of this on you at once,” Shin apologizes, taking a step towards his grandson. It’s still… strange, honestly, being so close to the boy he’d thought dead, so strange to see him alive and grown up. “Can I sit?” he asks, in part out of habit and in part out of being unsure if it even is okay, because the truth of the matter is he barely knows his own grandson at all.

“Oh,” Lloyd says, in the exact way Anna would have, when something had taken her by surprise. He shifts how he’s sitting, scoots over though he doesn’t need to. “Yeah, go ahead.” Once Shin does, Lloyd continues talking, only after one nervous, kind of lost look at his grandpa. “And don’t apologize, alright? I’m glad… It’s probably better that I know, you know? I appreciate that. Can’t believe Kratos was keeping that a secret…”

“Mm,” Shin says, and doesn’t say that he’s not even a little bit surprised that secrecy was the path Kratos took. Kratos, for all his textbook bravery when it comes to war, is a coward at relationships.

Even now, Kratos has left camp and perhaps even town entirely, off to sulk on his own somewhere. Noishe went with him, so Shin isn’t too worried about Kratos not coming back (_that dog’s good at keeping Kratos on track, somehow_), but he still has to laugh at how expected it is.

“You holding up alright?” Shin asks, when Lloyd doesn’t speak any more right away.

Lloyd shrugs. “Sure, I guess,” he says. He’s turning something over in his hands, his attention fixed on that. …an exsphere, Shin realizes, after a moment. There’s a keycrest on the back of Lloyd’s hand that’s empty. Shin wants to say something, wants to ask if that was Anna’s, having a hunch that it was but no way to confirm, especially since exspheres all look identical. He doesn’t get the chance before Lloyd speaks again. “You, uh, you knew Mom pretty well, huh?” Lloyd asks.

Shin isn’t sure if he should laugh or not. “Yeah,” he answers. “I did.”

Lloyd doesn’t look up from the exsphere he turns over in his fingers. “This was hers,” he says, his voice quiet. “It’s-- I guess it’s dumb, that it’s what I’m most worried about, after everything else I learned about today. But the truth about these things… it’s hard to not think about, you know?” 

Shin nods. “It is,” he agrees. He imagines it must be quite worse for Lloyd, having had that thing… his entire life, hadn’t he? His entire life, and he had no idea of anything about it except that it had belonged to his mother. But now he knows how the stones are created. The cost that went into them. And...

“Did she hate it?” Lloyd asks. He looks like he’s going to be sick. “Did it hurt her?”

Shin has never in his life found a good reason to lie. Even sparing his grandson’s feelings now would not be worth avoiding the truth. So.

“Yes,” he answers, plainly.

Lloyd’s fingers curl around the stone.

“It kind of… makes me not want to wear it again,” he whispers.

“Well,” Shin says. He hates that stone, hates what it represents. He himself doesn’t wear an exsphere, refuses to. But. This is not a decision he can make for Lloyd. Not really. 

“I’d probably be useless without it, though,” Lloyd laughs, bitter. That’s not true, but Shin knows the lack of an exsphere would set Lloyd back quite a lot. It would take him years without it to work up to where he is now. Lloyd turns it over in his hands again, looks up at Shin. “What do you think Mom would say? Do you think she’d mind?”

Shin turns that question over like a seed he didn’t pick out of his fruit, hard on his tongue, working it around in his mouth until he can manage to spit it out. He wants to say yes, of course she’d mind, because quite honestly _he _minds even though it’s none of his business, but. He knows Anna. He knew Anna. And he thinks…

“No, I don’t think she would,” he answers Lloyd, even though he hates it more than he can describe. He curls his hands into fists, places them against his knees, and doesn’t look at his grandson for a moment. “Or at least, I think—I think she would not mind, not if it was you using it. Especially… especially to get revenge on the Desians. And to save the worlds.”

He should have known that Lloyd can read him better than that.

“Cool,” Lloyd says, and then immediately: “What do _you _think?”

Shin shakes his head. “My opinion doesn’t matter here.”

“Sure it does,” Lloyd counters. “You’re my _grandpa. _Even if we just met—that means something, you know? I want to hear your thoughts.”

Shin sighs a sigh that’s just short of a groan. “Truthfully,” he says, and it’s like picking out a seed that got wedged between his teeth. “I hate that stone. But I won’t deny that exspheres are useful. _Horrible, _terrible things. But useful.”

“Yeah…” Lloyd says, and he scowls down at the rock as he continues rolling it between his fingers.

“So… holding onto it, at least until we’ve finished this journey… probably isn’t such a bad thing,” Shin admits.

Lloyd hums. He stops worrying the exsphere, and just holds it in his palm instead, staring at it like he’s deep in thought. Shin doesn’t say anything, knowing that if Lloyd is like Anna then a thought once interrupted will be difficult for him to get back.

“Those lives that are sacrificed to make exspheres,” Lloyd asks, slowly. “Where do they _go_?”

Shin grimaces. “I… don’t think you want to know the answer to that.”

Lloyd sends him a look like yes, yes he does want to know. Shin heaves a large sigh.

“I’m no expert, but to my understanding, the souls… remain trapped in the stone, even after death,” Shin says.

Lloyd jolts. “Oh, _fuck_,” he says, and it’s the first time Shin has heard him swear all day. “So Mom’s… just…” He squints at the stone, holding it up in the moonlight. “She’s _in _there?”

Shin looks away, deeply uncomfortable. “Kratos would have a better idea than me.”

“That’s…” Lloyd says, and then doesn’t say anything more.

They sit in silence for a long, long moment, and then Lloyd reaches over and snaps the exsphere back into its keycrest. At the startled, reproachful look that Shin sends him—_it’s none of Shin’s business, really, but he can’t help it_—Lloyd just shrugs and smiles, sheepishly.

“I haven’t… really made up my mind,” he says. “But if I try and keep it anywhere else, I’d just lose it, and I think Mom would hate that more.” He runs his thumb over the stone in a gesture that looks like one he’s repeated a million times in the past, it looks so unconscious and unthinking, but it seems to soothe Lloyd, and… Shin _swears _he sees the stone glow, just a little.

Still, his feelings about Anna’s exsphere are complicated, and sit obnoxiously in his throat, so he’s quite grateful when Lloyd says: “Anyway, can we talk about something else? I’m… _really _tired of thinking about all that.”

“Of course,” Shin says, a little quickly. “Anything you’d like to talk about?”

“Tell me about you?” Lloyd asks, immediately. “Can’t believe I’ve had a grandpa this whole time, and I didn’t even _know _about it—oh! Is there—Are there—Any other family?” he asks, tripping over his words in his excitement. “Do I have—anyone else that I don’t know about?”

Lloyd’s eagerness breaks Shin’s heart, just a little. “No one still alive but me, I’m afraid,” he answers, quiet, and Lloyd’s smile breaks. Before Lloyd can ask, Shin just goes ahead and explains: “The Desians killed or captured most everyone in Luin, they night they took your mother. I was… one of very few survivors.”

“That’s awful…” Lloyd whispers, hands clenched into fists and head hung low for a moment. If you asked Shin to guess what was on Lloyd’s mind, right now, he’d probably say revenge. Lloyd looks up after a moment, though, hopeful and curious. “But I… _had _other family?” he asks.

Shin nods. “Anna’s other father, so… another grandfather, and an aunt.”

“Mom had _two _dads??” Lloyd asks, quick and bright. “That’s—really cool? That’s… as many dads as I have, I guess.” He looks a little dumbstruck, staring into the distance with wide eyes. “That’s… so many dads… _Four _of them—I mean. Two dads, two grandpas, for me, but.” It’s hard to tell if he’s blushing, even in the full light of the moon, but the way Lloyd stops suddenly suggests he’s embarrassed. Anna used to do the same. “I think. The lack of sleep is getting to me.”

“Then maybe you should sleep,” Shin laughs.

“I’m too _awake_ to sleep,” Lloyd whines, which is also the spitting image of Anna, so Shin laughs more even as Lloyd presses on. “Tell me about my aunt—I wanna know about her, too!”

“Alright, alright,” Shin says, putting his hands up in surrender even as he smiles. If Lloyd is like Anna, and it seems he is, then there’s nothing to do but wait out the burst of energy, anyway. “Her name was Luca, she was a half-elf—”

“Wait, wait _wait, _she was a half-elf??” Lloyd asks. He leans towards his grandfather, squinting. “Are _you _a half-elf? Am… am _I _a half-elf??”

Shin laughs, louder and freer. “No, no,” he says. “I adopted Luca,” he explains. “And I married your other grandfather long after Anna was born, anyway.”

“But Luca was a half-elf?” Lloyd presses, though he’s grinning before Shin can even nod in response. “That’s sooooo cool. Just like Genis!! I should tell him—well, maybe when he’s not sleeping.” He sends a glance over his shoulder to where the rest of the party is, Genis having fallen asleep with his head in Raine’s lap some time ago. Looking at them makes Lloyd yawn, and Shin smiles.

“Do… you want to hear about the time Luca shoved a fireball in someone’s face?” he asks.

“Um, absolutely??” Lloyd says, delighted. “And then you gotta tell me all the cool stories about Mom, too.”

“Alright,” Shin says, and then he does.

And he keeps talking, until Lloyd falls asleep with his head in his lap.

**Author's Note:**

> > true love is getting sent to sylvarant to become part of mizuho's information network and then falling in love with some loud mouth jock of a guy who keeps cussing out desians while his 12 y/o daughter giggles behind his back--
>> 
>> — prepare to die, eggbear (@rarsneezes) [November 13, 2019](https://twitter.com/rarsneezes/status/1194510483237167107?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)


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